Integrated circuit (IC) chips are used in a variety of applications including security functions, government defense purposes, electronic devices and systems such as cellular telephones and gaming to name a few. Counterfeit IC chips may result in failures that are more than just inconvenient or a minor loss of money.
Counterfeiting of integrated circuit chips has become a major problem. Nearly every industry that relies on electronics for data communication, data management, and data processing has encountered counterfeit integrated circuits. A counterfeit IC chip may include an unauthorized copy, fails to conform to the original component manufacturer (OCM), or has incorrect or false identifying marks or documentation.
Counterfeit IC chips results in supply chain vulnerabilities. For example, counterfeit IC chips include those that are recycled and remarked, defective or out of specification, and cloned.
In certain circumstances, counterfeit IC chips may include additional logic capable of routing data including secure information such as credit card numbers, account numbers, and passwords from the IC chips into the the hands of an adverse party.
In order to counterfeit an IC chip, it is typically reverse engineered by processes such as delamination or delayering. The authentic IC chip is delayered one layer at a time and the circuit configuration of that particular layer is copied as a new schematic layout which can be used for manufacturing the counterfeit IC chip. Other reverse engineering techniques include the use of scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) and backside imaging.
Anti-counterfeiting detection methods exist in efforts to detect counterfeiting of IC chips and include, for example, X-ray, scanning electronic or imaging, or DNA marking. However, these anti-counterfeiting detection methods are complicated and time-consuming
Thus, there is a need to prevent IC chip counterfeiting along with a simple and easy anti-counterfeiting detection method. The invention satisfies this need.